Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

When the customers had gone and they were alone again, to put pressure on the assistant he said, ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here until Jiyan Hanım comes.’

‘Stay. At seven I’ll be closing the shop. You can wait as long as you like. You can stay until morning if you wish.’ She did not speak again. She concentrated on a new set of customers who had just walked in.

As he was trying to call Jiyan for perhaps the twentieth time Ömer remembered Elif’s message. If it had been some other time he would be sorry that he had forgotten his wife’s birthday and try to make amends for his forgetfulness. But now he was in no state to think about all this. He was focused on finding Jiyan — or at least getting news of her.

‘I’ll go, but I’ll be back before seven. If you speak to Jiyan Abla in the meantime, please ask her to call me. My phone will be on.’

Perhaps the assistant really did not know where Jiyan was. The chemist did not have to tell the poor girl all her plans! She had said, ‘I’ll be late.’ What need was there for more? Hesitantly he walked to the hotel. It was possible that she had left news for him there. How was she to know that I would sit stupidly at the shop and wait?

He was not wrong. The elderly hotel clerk in reception pointed to someone dozing in an armchair in the dimmest corner of the lobby. ‘He has brought news from the chemist. He has been waiting for ages.’ Then he called out to the sleeping man in Kurdish. ‘Yazar hatîn! The writer’s here!’

The man who got up from the chair and walked towards Ömer was dressed smartly. Not very young. Well built and handsome. His complexion and expression were western even if the lines on his face were not. In his walk and in his face there was something alien to these parts. He was wearing a fresh white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow over dark widely cut trousers. The gun at his waist in the large pocket of his trousers was immediately evident. It was as though he wanted not to hide it but to show it.

‘I’ve come to take you to Jiyan Hanım. Jiyan Hanım said, “If he has time, if he wants to come.”’

Ömer hesitates for a moment. Who is this man? What is he? He does not look like a driver, a bodyguard or a servant. Why doesn’t she phone? Why send this man instead? How does one trust a stranger in this sinister land?

He turns to the hotel clerk, with whom he has now begun to be friends, with a questioning glance, as though appealing for assistance.

‘He’s a relative of our Jiyan Abla, a man you can trust,’ says the clerk. ‘She’s sent for you. You should go.’

‘Isn’t Jiyan Hanım in town? I’ve been calling her all day on the phone, and I haven’t been able to reach her.’

‘She’s in the country. There’s no reception there.’ He points to the invisible mountains. ‘Near the mountains…’

The adventure is about to begin, thinks Ömer. This scene could have been the opening sequence for a film about the Kurds. The handsome, mysterious man with a weapon in his belt has come to take the lovesick writer to an unknown destination in the middle of the mountains. Will the writer go? Will he have the courage? The Governor had mentioned the voice of the sirens the day we met. Did I not come here to hear that voice? Am I not after a voice that will whisper the word I lost?

He would go. The story that began with the scream in the coach station in the capital would write itself step by step. It would come to an end. This time he would not be the godlike writer who decided the fate of his heroes and heroines and who played with them like a cat with a mouse. He was not going to write the story; the story would write him.

‘At least wait five minutes and give me time to change this shirt.’

The man brings his right hand to his chest right on top of his heart with a gracious ‘Yes, sir.’ Yet another scene from a film, thinks Ömer as he walks towards the stairs. The man’s gesture was not natural to him: it was as though he had had to learn it. Why can’t I perceive my experience here as real life? Why does everything turn into a scenario, a film, a surreal adventure or poetry in my head? But it is all a part of everyday life here … Does the reality of other lands, other folk, other people always seem to us like a frightening or a seductive fairytale?

When he comes downstairs, the hotel clerk says, ‘He’s waiting for you outside, beg. He’s a relative of Jiyan Hanım. Please go, sir. If Jiyan Hanım has summoned you, you should go. Besides, it’s really beautiful in our mountains in this season.’

As he goes out of the hotel door he thinks about the way the man said, ‘our mountains’. Mahmut also used to say our mountains, as did Jiyan, Mahmut’s father and the others, too. It is as though the mountains are their most valuable, most prized possession. The refuge of hope, protecting spirits … Is that why those mountains are set on fire, to annihilate hope? Or is it the opposite: to revitalize hope? But how does this man know where to go? How much people here know, and how little they give away!

A black jeep stands before the door. The type of vehicle that challenged the widespread perception of poverty and deprivation in the region. As soon as the man sees Ömer in front of the hotel he springs with agility from the driving seat and opens the front passenger door. ‘Do be seated. You’ll be more comfortable here. We have over an hour’s journey. That is, if the road isn’t closed.’

Ömer doesn’t ask where they are going. They are going to Jiyan. I am going to look for her in her own land, in the land of her own reality and legend, far from this town that has lost its sound, withdrawn into itself and is lying in wait. He remembers the message that Elif left on his phone. Today is my wife’s birthday, and I have forgotten it for the first time in years. I must call her immediately. A little later when we leave the plain and dive into the depths of the valleys and gorges there will be no reception at all. He is going to speak to his wife without planning in advance what he is going to say, without making excuses, just as it springs to mind. Elif is the true me, my diary, she is a part of me: Jiyan is my legend, my fairy story, the mirage in the desert of lost words.

He dials Elif’s number. He lets it ring for a long time. If the phone were switched off there would be a notification to indicate this. She’s either left it somewhere or she’s not answering. He looks at his watch. It must be six o’clock there. Perhaps she has gone out to dinner, perhaps the congress has lasted a long time. Those boring, scientific meetings where no one listens to the speakers, and when it comes to debate everyone competes to show off their knowledge. He rejects the idea of sending a text message. It is not something that he can write in a few words. There is nothing to say at this moment. At this moment he is going along a road that follows the bends of a gurgling river, passing the fortified checkpoints of the military, towards the mountains whose snowy peaks are streaked red by the setting sun.

‘The surrounding mountains reach over 3,000 metres. The mountain that rises in front of us is almost 3,500 metres. No one has ever seen it without snow. Local folk say that if the snows of Mortepe melt the end of the world is nigh. They believe that the mountain protects them and that it has supernatural powers.’

Ömer is surprised at the man’s polished speech, his ability to explain his views so well and articulately. It’s as though his excellent Turkish has been learnt in adulthood. The difference in intonation calls to mind the accent of western foreigners rather than that of the east. The old man at the hotel had said that he was a relative of Jiyan Abla. A relative, a bodyguard or … Or what?